Robson App: Earn quick beer money with voice recording tasks

Last Updated on October 25, 2021

Update: Robson has been dry for the past few months. There are hardly any jobs for most of the countries. You can still give it a try if you like.

There has been an influx in the amount of voice recording jobs available online. The jobs are scattered across a wide variety of platforms (Appen & Clickworker included).

Even some new companies have also been trying to grab a chunk of this large investment, GlobalMe being one of them. Robson is an app by GlobalMe, that is designed to help you record phrases using your smartphone, which can then be uploaded to them and you get a handsome amount in return for your contribution.

It’s a very simple and effortless process. You just need to: 

1. Download the Robson app from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. 
2. Launch the App, Fill in your Profile information (such as location, paypal email address, etc.). Remember to choose Paypal as your payment option, the other ones don’t work.
3. You will see a task available to you (or maybe not). Begin working on the task using your smartphone, and make sure to follow the instructions. Submit the task once you have completed it (takes 20-30 minutes).
4. Keep checking your email. They will contact you if you need to re-record some phrases (which usually happens). You need to re-record certain phrases within 48 hours so they can re-check. I had to re-record thrice before all my recordings were accepted.
5. Once all your recordings are approved, you will be paid within 15 days. Note that it might take more time, as they are still a new company, and their support system is not very robust.

Have you ever used a voice assistant? It works by listening to you and converting your voice to various commands, that can be done using the assistant. But since people around the world have different voice, tones, accent, and pace of speaking, we need a lot of voice data to train the AI behind these assistants. This is the only way the AI will get better at understanding commands by everyone.

This is just how machine learning algorithms work. The more data you feed them, the better it gets. And since all major voice assistants are owned by billion-dollar organizations, it makes sense that they are throwing money for companies to get them as much voice data as they can to process, making their algorithm better in the process.

This is where Robson steps in. It has voice collection tasks for a lot of different countries, and they compensate you via Paypal (They also have options for Gift Vouchers, but they don’t work).

Robson is a one-time task but pays much better when you compare similar data collection tasks on Appen or Clickworker. For 50 recordings, I was paid 12$ via Paypal. Not bad for a quick mobile task that took me 30-45 minutes in total. 

After completing your task, you might not get any more jobs. The Robson team will notify you if there is a new task available for you, but I am not really sure it will happen anytime soon.

Update: New tasks do come every 3-4 months, but they are not consistent. For me, Robson has been dry since March.

Remember to only select Paypal as the payment option, the other options (Google Pay/Amazon Gift Card) don’t work and will only delay your payments. The payment takes around 15 days to reach you after your task is accepted. This is probably because they are kind of understaffed in the payments department, and are new in the crowdsourcing scene.

Robson Payment Proof

Just for the skeptical crowd out there, here’s my payment proof from Robson:

I have earned a lot more using Robson, with their call center roleplay tasks. They paid 1$/minute of recording, and I ended up getting paid over 100$ by them. I have uploaded these payment proofs in the Robson Payment Wall.

There are some tricks you can use to earn a bit more using this opportunity. These might not work for everyone, but it has worked for several people.

1. Use multiple devices: Every household nowadays has at least 2 smartphones. So the trick is to simply use the other smartphone to complete the task again. People have completed some tasks up to 4 times using different devices and earned four times the amount of a single task.
   
   As a general rule of thumb, make sure you are using mobile data in all your devices so that there is a different IP address for all of them. Also, give different profile information for all your devices.
   
   
2. Use the Location trick: This one is a bit tricky. Turns out that you can change the location in your profile to access tasks for that particular country. So you can change your location to the US, and get more tasks to complete, hence increasing your earnings. This trick does not work anymore. Robson now requires you to verify your location using mobile verification.
   
   But there’s a catch! You will be rejected if your voice/accent is not natural. For eg: If a task in the UK, requires a British accent, and you try to complete it, you will be rejected. Don’t try to do voice acting, as you will just be wasting your time.
   
   The idea here is to utilize tasks that require your natural accent. Say you completed the task in India (which requires the Indian accent obviously). Then you can change your location to the US, and you might see a task requiring people with Indian Accent (there is one such task that pays 20$ for 500 recordings).
   
   Turns out you will be accepted for such tasks and can get paid for them. So it can help you multiply your earnings.

Overall, these are just tricks, and they might place checks in their app in future versions to make sure you cannot trick them. But as of now, you can try it. There is not a 100% success rate, but there sure is a chance to earn more. 

UPDATE: The location method described above does not work anymore. It was about time they fixed this loophole. Anyways, there are several other sites that offer you money for recording various phrases, or even for your photos and videos. See a complete list of data collection sites here.

But even if you use Robson as a one-time task, it’s still good beer money. Here are some more sites that pay you for your voice:

GlobalMe, the company behind the Robson App, is a Canada based organization. It is essentially a data collection company (like many others) but specializes in voice-based data collection for Smart Assistants, probably because those were the clients they landed.

They have been in business since 2010, but was a fairly small company (around 50 people) till 2019. Infact, they hired their 50th employee in 2018.

In 2019, they were acquired by Summa Linguae, a Poland based tech company. That’s when they started making waves with their Robson app. They are still fairly understaffed, but you can see them working on a Global level.

There are still people who are not able to get payments from Robson, due to various reasons. But everything aside, they are definitely a legit company, and are on their way to growth. Keep an eye out for GlobalMe, as it might get a lot of new projects in the future. And since they pay much better as compared to Appen and CW, it would be received much more positively by the online workers.

Also check out AudioBee, a similar website that pays for voice recording, translation and transcription jobs

.